Facebook faces lawsuit for snooping-on private messages for profit

Social networking giant Facebook has reportedly been sued for allegedly snooping-on private messages of its users without their prior consent in order to mine the data for its own profit.

The class-action suit has been filed by Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley, who have accused Facebook of scanning private messages with URLs in them 'for purposes including but not limited to data mining and user profiling.'

Meanwhile, a Facebook spokesperson said that the allegations are without merit and the company would defend itself vigorously, Cnet reports.

The lawsuit cites a report from Swiss security firm High-Tech Bridge that suggests that Facebook scans the links shared in private messages, along with giving references to media reports about the social media site's third-party plug-ins for counting 'likes' shared through private messages.

The plaintiffs, on behalf of all US users who have sent or received private messages that included a URL in the message, are seeking an injunction against Facebook to stop the practice, as well as statutory damages, which includes 100 dollars for each day that Facebook violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, per each member of the class, the report added.